POSITION ON THE CURRENT SITUATION, THE REPRESSION and THE FIGHT OF THE OPPRESSED.
We are in a world that develops systems of social oppression and these are ever increasing, producing violence in all its forms.
In some places this system is sustained through psychological violence, resting fundamentally on the manipulative methods of the mass media.
In other cases – besides the aforementioned method – the system promotes armed conflicts, invades territories, and allows the formation of gangs of mercenaries.
In these various ways Europe, USA, China, and Japan, respond to recession, stagnation and other variants of the Capitalist cycles.
Our region has suffered negative influences on our economy due to the world situation which is marked by the low prices of raw materials.
And, as in any macro-economic situation of recession and negative-growth, the operative powers will stake claims over and above the big majorities of the oppressed which will have to bear the consequences, and these powers use what they call “austerity measures”. The background theme is not whether to grow or not to grow, but whether to distribute or not to distribute – the wealth and the power. This theme continues outside of the agendas of the political parties and the mass media.
Generally, the austerity measures taken over the populations involve an abrupt fall in the material conditions of daily life, including how we manage to feed ourselves, right up to how we can access medical and educational services, also including transport, energy, and more.
The sharp decline in the quality of life generally of entire populations leads to discontent, to an increasing intensity of social protests. Seen from the side of those holding the power these protests must be criminalized in order that they do not spread, also in order that the protests do not elaborate connections that can evoke protests against other of their abuses or raise questions on the use of the system’s violent means of suppression.
In our country the criminalization of protests has begun quite openly. The methods used aim to repeat even the same – though more subtly – steps taken in previous decades.
It is necessary o give answers to this, which go further beyond the inconclusive struggles of the past, where the oppressors came out pretty much victorious.
Humanists affirm that at this stage of our humanity, active non-violence emerges clearly as the best tool to face and fight oppression.
Non-violence puts it clear in black and white who are the oppressors, the cowards, the real criminals and fraudsters.
We will try to have our militants understand that the emergence of a new society and a new human being really requires changing the methods of action of the past.
We will closely attend to this oppression of the legitimate rights of the people to protest and rebel against injustices.
We ask all of us to imagine what kind of society we want to achieve, its values, the kind of agreements to make between people, and what it would be like with the cessation of the different forms of violence.
Supported by these aspirations, we understand that the way to struggle must be to fill the streets with joy, strength and affection for all the oppressed and to provoke a vacuum before the hatred and misery caused by the oppressing system and oppressors.
Non-violent struggle leads the oppressors to landscapes they are not used to where their hatred is intended to raise the same eruptions in us, that baseness and hide-behind cowardice that is presumed will ferment into a physical violence as a reaction from us to so much abuse.
But we propose to leave them witnessing a different sort of evidence, forcing them to get out from behind their masks and in no way giving them any excuse to divert their attention from what the majority demands, but to the contrary, to use our way to generate sympathy and empathy with the beset majority – and to repudiate the dirty work of the controlled mass media.
We intend to inspire entire populations into prominence, because then they will begin to understand the wonderful world we’re missing building, which is being enfolded by inaction and passivity and left to a minority of representatives of a merely formal democracy. Whereas we can reveal the real power of the people and what it takes to materialise and build a real democracy, direct participatory democracy, in which power is really with the people and not with those leaders in bad faith nor their representatives.
The current technological revolution puts us in a position to overcome the issues that generate suffering in humans. We need technical people to accompany us in this revolution using technology but with a truly human intention; in a social, cultural and spiritual revolution.
As our humanist statements have proposed over four decades, there is no future except that which comes from all and is for all.
We invite our brothers and sisters in this struggle, to take the path of creative protest and to emphasise alternative proposals in all fields, to open the future and spread the urge triggered by visions of a truly human society, in which human beings, the people, become the central value.
For all these reasons, we begin a campaign that we call “Real democracy, the right of rebellion and non-violent struggle.”
We are building a team engaged in non-violent direct action that can educate and activate people within the frame of this methodology, while contacting political, social, cultural, and grassroots groups or other groups whatever; with the interest to engage in exchanges about our proposal and to hear from other organizations their stances and points of view.
Our future and that of future generations depends on what we do today.
National Coordination Team of the Humanist Party,
Montevideo: November 26, 2015.
